Bringing music to the community

Choir director encourages self-esteem, healing and support through singing

By Nick O’Connor
The Portland Upside
November 2009

Photo by Shannon Batts

Crystal Meneses’ childhood love of singing has transformed into a passion for using music to bridge generational gaps.

In the small auditorium at Ethos Music Center in North Portland, I’m listening to a choir of about 25 boys and girls sing “To Zion,” Lauryn Hill’s powerful love anthem to her unborn son. This recital is the culmination of a weeklong summer camp which my 8-year-old daughter attended, and I’ve heard her practicing the song around the house. But as 11-year-old Ella’s lead vocals soar, backed by the full choir’s angelic chanting of the phrase “marching, marching to Zion,” I’m struck more deeply than I know. Good gravy, I’m actually crying.

I return to interview the dynamic 27-year-old Ethos choir director, Crystal Meneses. At Ethos, Crystal leads both a kids’ choir and The Portland Women’s Intergenerational Choir. In its third year, the Intergenerational Choir has grown from about 15 singers last year, to more than 40 now.

How does Crystal feel about the large turnout?

“I was overwhelmed... My vision is being realized.”

I visit practice sessions of both choirs. Voice warm-ups are brief and the material challenging and diverse, ranging from an Italian aria to a medley from “Phantom of the Opera.” Crystal encourages boldness by telling her singers to “make mistakes loudly.”

For the interview Crystal is cheerful, happy to discuss her life in music. She speaks quickly, imparting a lot of information. Occasionally, she lets loose a big laugh.

“I’ve always been in a choir,” Crystal says. “I started in third grade.”

She began with the Greater Gresham Kids Kwire (later called the Mt. Hood Youth Choir), directed by Dr. Gayleen Martin. Continuing throughout her school days, Crystal sang with the Portland Symphonic Girlchoir, Sam Barlow High School’s Barlow Sound, and both the Portland State and Marylhurst University choirs.

At age 17 Crystal’s musical path took a mystical turn.

“We went to Doernbecher Children’s Hospital, to the ICU. I had always been shy about singing solos. But that day, something inside me said, ‘You can sing by yourself.’ It had never occurred to me to do that. And then a mom pulled me into a room and asked me to sing for her daughter, Karly, which I did. I thought she was sleeping peacefully.”

Crystal sang “Silent Night” and “Some Children See Him,” which she was getting ready to perform at The Grotto. Karly sat up and smiled at her.

“Later I found out she was in a coma and woke up.”

The Oregonian’s Margie Boulé wrote a story about the experience and asked if Crystal had ever heard of music therapy.

“That was the beginning,” Crystal says.

Crystal went on to study music therapy at Marylhurst University. Although she expects to receive her degree along with a teaching certificate by the end of this year, it will not be in music therapy, but a major she made up herself.

“I decided to switch my degree to ‘Music In The Community,’” she says. “I had a great mentor at Marylhurst named Christine Korb. She inspired me to research intergenerational community projects.”

Crystal further explains, “In my school practicum, I was leading sing-a-longs with young choir students and in wise-elder communities.”

I stop her to clarify the term “wise-elder community.” She and some fellow Marylhurst students didn’t like the terms “nursing homes” or “assisted-living communities,” so they chose something better.

She adds, “I’m Filipino and we don’t have old folks homes there. My dad freaked out when he saw the wise-elder homes.”

Crystal was directing the choir at Grout Elementary and at the same time, visiting the Odd Fellows’ wise-elder home directly across the street.

“I had been doing research on intergenerational studies, the attitudes of generations towards each other. I realized the dissonance. So I brought the kids over to the wise-elder home. The kids and adults wouldn’t look at each other, or talk. The kids were afraid to sit next to the elders or shake hands.”

For the first time she pauses. Her tone turns serious.

“Susan (the principal) and I got a grant together to fund my intergenerational project. I researched what to ask to get them talking and writing. What I did was create an intervention called ‘scripted musical dialogue,’ in which they made postcards to talk about music, art and everything. For example, I had students draw pictures of what they would look like when they got older.”

Both groups wrote musical postcards for five months, and Crystal hand delivered them to their “musical pals,” walking back and forth across the street like a letter carrier.

“Things happened,” she says. “Some musical pals passed away. Kids talked about their parents not being together. I was delivering mail and putting together a sing-along program that would engage both groups. I used songs from the wise-elders’ childhoods like ‘Daisy Daisy,’ and patriotic songs. The kids loved these songs. At the second sing-along, they were holding each other’s hands and laughing. I couldn’t get them to stop talking.”

Looking for a space for an intergenerational choir, Crystal came to Ethos in 2001.

“They said ‘Yeah, here’s a space, we’ll work with you, go ahead.’ Three people showed up to the first practice. Then one of them passed away and another one left, I think because a family member was sick.”

She had to put the intergenerational choir on the back burner.

“Then,” she shrugs, acknowledging fate, “I really started teaching.”

Without a credential, and while a part-time student at Marylhurst, Crystal has been teaching—often one-on-one—for almost a decade at elder homes, hospitals and treatment centers, and in the public schools.

“I do four to five schools a year. Sometimes they can only offer you an hour a week. Or I’m artist in residence for one or two full days, rotating all the kids through, maybe 25 minutes or a half hour per kid.”

For many children, she notes, this is the extent of their music education.

“As I did more music in the community, I realized it’s what I want to do. That’s where my heart and core are. My teaching style is influenced by my music therapy education. The skill crossover has been easy for me, and has given me a useful edge.”

And Crystal has benefited from the support of her family. Crystal’s mother and grandmother were teachers. And the musical steps of her brother Vincent have closely matched her own. Vincent is a performer, songwriting teacher and social entrepreneur. He opened a nonprofit called Organized Sound on the coast this year.

Yet Crystal’s natural talent for spreading self-esteem and support through singing is all her own.

“When you sing, your insecurities are right in front of you. You can look around and get instant support. I’ve always just wanted a safe place where women can sing, which this is about, not competition or being perfect.”

With fond memories of traveling internationally with her choir as a girl, Crystal wants the intergenerational choir to tour. And she would like to hold an intergenerational choir camp.

“I have a vision of 100 women of all ages singing together. I want to do outreach with the choir, want it to be a mentoring program, a group to be with and be part of.”

And she will do it. When I ask about obstacles, Crystal says simply, “I don’t let anything get in my way. Sometimes it just takes more time.”

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Ethos Music Center is a nonprofit organization that brings music and music education to underserved youth. Visit them online at www.ethos.org

Nick O’Connor contributes to Free Fun Guides at www.freefunguides.com He has rejected the motto “Keeping Weird and Just Doing It In The Rose City That Works.”